One more Sunday and we are still at home. But it is a very special Sunday, it is Easter, the Lord has risen, let us not look for the one who lives forever among the dead.
That cry has resounded wrapped in silence, in the empty streets, with our immobile images in the church, wrapped by so much pain in our humanity; so much disease and death do not stop causing me deep suffering; Unknown people, distant, but others very close, in this hemisphere and in others; there are deaths without dead, duels in solitude and at a distance, farewells that tear the heart; We know that there are final prayers, that many priests are doing this delicate and necessary service, but how long are we going to need to do the double mourning: definitive absence on the one hand and physical impossibility of being next to each other, crying and hugging each other, on the other.
Lent in quarantine, an unprecedented experience, and a holy week in closed houses, in hospitals, in concentration camps, in soup kitchens, in detention centers, in families that welcome people to relieve pain, in those who continue to day risking life.
A real holy week, raw, penetrating to the core, we do not need to imagine scenarios, it is enough to have our senses awake to let ourselves be “touched” at a distance, “smell” the air that is denied us; “See” in horizons of proximity and distance; “Hear” whispers and cries that stifle tears; “Savor” sadness, uncertainty, fear …
And yet, in this Easter 2020 that will go down in history after contemplating in silence, with depth, from the depth, what is happening worldwide, without being able to believe it, has given us great help in various fields: power accompany with many hours of screen celebrations of the holy days: unconditional dedication from love made service that Jesus reminded us on holy Thursday and that we are seeing it in so many servants of our society, that we usually do not realize that they are and how necessary they are, but today we appreciate your dedicated life.
We remained in holy hour, accompanying the loneliness, the pain of that Jesus incarnated in so many of our brothers. On Friday in solitude and silence, we adore with deep respect from within, that passion and death that has concrete faces and names. And on Saturday we continue in inhabited solitude and at night we come to the light, that candle multiplied in thousands of small and large candles, spread over so many places around the world.
A celebration of the Easter Vigil also very particular where everything resonated from and in the digital world, at a physical and real distance even among the closest people, where an invisible community made itself felt in communion from the candle that is lit, the Word that Creation tells us, the glory with the ringing of bells, the song of the hallelujah, the renewal of the baptismal promises, the broken bread without being able to be distributed, the peace translated in gesture, smile, gaze … everything is so strange! .
And yet, we are given the experience of resurrection and we feel its effects: consolation, peace, universal prayer, perceiving that there is an underground river that revitalizes us and makes us common-union, a diverse community equaled by pain and death. And now, more than ever, for that hope against all hope, for the faith that love is stronger.
That at this stage of the path of our life, -so surprising! – we keep the peace waiting, the deep sense of what happens to us, mutual care until that healing outbreak for wounded humanity arrives, because we have many people who They give their lives daily to take care of us.
I end up appropriating the verses of R. Kipling:
I chose life … And there were a thousand things that I did not choose,
that came to me from soon and they transformed my life.
Good and bad things he did not seek, a life he did not expect
and I chose at least how to live it.
I chose the dreams to decorate it,
the hope to hold it, the courage to face it.
María Luisa Berzosa fi
Entrevías – Madrid
